'Shall we go down and look at it more closely?' he asked, after a moment's silence, during which he had revolved some thought in his mind. 'I have an odd notion that seeing it again may lay the ghost of an uneasy dream that always haunts me. After a harder day's work than usual, this scene is sure to recur to me at night; sometimes I have to leave you there, you have floated so far out of my reach,' with a meaning movement of his hand. Mildred shuddered.
'Shall we come—that is—if you do not much dislike the idea,' and as Mildred saw no reason for refusing, she overcame her feelings of reluctance, and followed him through the little gate, and down the steep steps beyond which lay the uneven masses of gray brockram. There he waited for her with outstretched hand.
'You need not think that I shall trust you to your own care again,' he said, with rather a whimsical smile, but as he felt the trembling that ran through hers, it vanished, and he became unusually grave. In another moment he checked her abruptly, and almost peremptorily. 'We will not go any farther; your hand is not steady enough, you are nervous.' Mildred in vain assured him to the contrary; he insisted that she should sit down for a few moments, and, in spite of her protestations, took off his great-coat and spread it on the rock. 'I am warm, far too warm,' he asserted, when he saw her looks of uneasiness. 'This spot is so sheltered;' and he stood by her and lifted his hat, as though the cool air refreshed him.
'Do you remember our conversation on the other side of the bridge?' he asked presently, turning to her. Mildred flushed with sudden pain—too well she remembered it, and the long night of struggle and well-nigh despair that had followed it.
'I wonder what you thought of me; you were very quiet, very sweet-voiced in your sympathy; but I fancied your eyes had a distrustful gleam in them; they seemed to doubt the wisdom of my choice. Mildred,' with a quick touch of passion in his voice such as she had never heard before, 'what a fool you must have thought me!'
'Dr. Heriot, how can you say such things?' but her heart beat faster; he had called her Mildred again.
'Because I must and will say them. A man must call himself names when he has made such a pitiful thing of life. Look at my marrying Margaret—a mistake from beginning to end; and yet I must needs compass a second piece of folly.'
'There, I think you are too hard on yourself.'
'What right had I at my age, or rather with my experience and knowledge of myself, to think I could make a young girl happy, knowing, as I ought to have known, that her endearing ways could not win her an entrance into the deepest part of my nature—that would have been closed for ever,' speaking in a suppressed voice.
'It was a mistake for which no one could blame you—Polly least of all,' she returned, eager to soothe this wounded susceptibility.